


High Tide Or Low Tide

by Amatara



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Angst, Catharsis, Character Study, Coping, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Needs A Hug, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 07:50:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13783047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amatara/pseuds/Amatara
Summary: After Paul’s confrontation with Tyler leaves him in a dark mood, an out-of-her-depth Michael faces  her own demons to talk to him. Missing scene for s1e14, The War Without, The War Within.





	High Tide Or Low Tide

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laughingpineapple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/gifts).



> A birthday gift for a dear friend, who wanted more Michael and Paul interaction. <3

*

There’s a gaggle of crewmen milling about in the corridor outside. Clustered together in twos or threes, they’re talking to each other in hushed voices, looking nervous and frustrated and concerned. All of their heads swivel around when they see her, and Michael wades between them towards the doors to Engineering, trying to stifle a growing sense of unease.

“He threw us out,” someone blurts, before she can ask. Valdez, usually one of the shier cadets, is giving her a helpless look. “Lieutenant Stamets… he went out to the mess hall, then when he came back, he was different. Not _normal_ different, just… _wrong_. Mumbled something about needing to focus, then told us all to get out and let him work.” There’s a long, uncomfortable silence, which no one else seems eager to fill. “One group went to help with the ship’s repairs, but the rest of us… we’re worried. We weren’t sure who to call.”

Michael scans the group of - almost all painfully young - crewmen, but the face she's looking for is nowhere to be seen. “Cadet Tilly,” she says. “Isn’t she here?” Right now, Tilly knows Stamets better than anyone else on the ship. That and, unlike Michael herself, she has a knack for defusing tense situations, so if anyone will know how to handle this, it’s her.

“She went off-shift an hour ago.” Valdez shrugs. “Said she was going for a run, and we didn’t want to page her on the shipwide intercom. You know, just so we didn’t call attention to the, um, situation.”

Michael nods, trying to imagine how Stamets would react if he found out they paged Tilly to deal with him. “Sharp thinking, Cadet.” A little less so is their alternative to simply stand around being worried instead. Especially because, as a result, it now falls to her to handle this. “All right.” She plants a hand on her hip, trying to feign a confidence she doesn’t feel; the whole business with Tyler and Georgiou has left her barely able to sort out her own emotions, let alone someone else’s. But if Stamets is in trouble, she can’t ignore that either. “You may all go assist with ship’s repairs. Meanwhile I will talk to the Lieutenant. Once this has been resolved, you’ll be called back.”

There’s some half-hearted grumbling when the group starts to disperse, but it takes them less than thirty seconds to clear the corridor entirely. Probably, Michael thinks, they’re rather relieved to have this taken out of their hands. She’d feel the same if someone could take it out of hers.

When she walks in, he’s standing with his back to her, hunched over a console in apparent concentration, and on first impression nothing out of the ordinary strikes her. Even the lack of reaction to her arrival isn’t necessarily a bad sign. Then it hits her that he isn’t moving, his fingers not even touching the screen. Rather, they’re clutching the edge of the console in too tight a grip, and his eyes, once she gets a proper view, are scrunched shut.

“Lieutenant?” she calls from several feet away, wanting to give him ample warning. His head lifts, and in that first instant, he looks unspeakably fragile. Then his jaw clenches, and an array of emotions flit across his face: surprise, rage, frustration, hope, shame, and finally a blank kind of resignation.

“Burnham.” He manages a stiff nod in her direction, body taut as a spring and his eyes oddly red. “I - wasn’t expecting you here.”

Michael inclines her head, moving a little closer. She could give him the rational, safe explanation: everything hinges on growing these new spores, so naturally she came here to see if she could help. It’s not a lie, but it’s not the whole truth either, and something tells her that little less will do.

“I’ve been… restless, ever since my return,” she says, keeping her gaze down as much for her own benefit as for his. She can’t mention the Emperor, and she _won’t_ mention Tyler, and she can only hope Stamets won’t pick up on the fact she’s playing all this rather close to the chest. “They no longer need me on the Bridge, so I felt in need of a… distraction. I came here hoping to assist you.” Looking up, she dares to raise a wry eyebrow. “Just like old times, one might say.”

Did that get a flicker of a reaction? It’s hard to say, with the scowl that’s still plastered across his face… or, not a scowl, exactly. Something darker than that. “Fine. But don’t get in my way. I was just…” He trails off in obvious frustration.

“Working?” Michael supplies, trying - and probably failing - to keep the doubt from reaching her voice.

“ _Thinking_ ,” Stamets says, looking moments away from changing his mind about not throwing her out like he did everyone else.

“Ah.” This is going incredibly well. What would Tilly do at a time like this? Not keep avoiding the real subject, for certain - instead she’d be open, direct, deliberately vulnerable to engender trust. “Something happened,” Michael says, aiming for directness, at least: the one thing on that list she’s confident she _can_ pull off. “I talked to Valdez when I arrived. He said you came back from the mess looking upset, and immediately told the crew to leave.”

Stamets starts to open his mouth, then quickly clamps it shut again, as if not trusting himself to respond. “Do I need an excuse to get five minutes of peace around here?” he grumbles at last, but there’s no real fire in his voice and the attempt at churlishness is half-hearted at best.

Encouraged by what feels like a minor success, Michael dares to wade deeper into the morass of unprocessed emotion - his as well as hers. “I did not hear about Doctor Culber until…” She swallows, not trusting herself to go on and say something like _until the man who used to be my lover taunted me with it._ “Until my mission was nearly complete.” She takes a steadying breath, trying not to reel under the intensity of Stamets’ gaze. “Please accept my deepest condolences, Lieutenant. When I learned who was responsible, I -”

“You talked to him,” Stamets cuts her off, and the tiny shift in his expression may as well have been a landslide for the depth of suspicion she glimpses underneath. “Of _course_ you talked to him.” Distaste gives his voice a ragged edge. “Is that why you’re here? To talk to me on Tyler’s behalf? Try to convince me I overreacted just now?”

Overreacted? In sending his people away? There’s no way she can answer that without knowing what Stamets was reacting _to,_ but it doesn’t feel as if he is referring to his treatment of the crew. Another incident, then; something involving Tyler? After what he did, she could not blame Stamets for holding a grudge.  

“I haven’t seen Tyler,” she says, feeling herself begin to shut down despite her resolution to take Tilly’s example to heart. It’s the strangest feeling: like watching herself through someone else’s eyes, observing the shame and resistance and fear even as she’s powerless to tune them out. “Saru asked me to, but I turned him down. I - couldn’t. Not when it’s all so fresh. Not while I can still feel his hands around my throat.” It’s out before she can stop herself, the thought she didn’t voice in front of Saru spilling out in all of its ugly glory. “I’m sorry,” she mumbles, heat rising to her face. “That was… inappropriate. You have your own loss to come to terms with. I shouldn’t be burdening you with mine.”

“And why shouldn’t you?” For a moment, she isn’t sure it’s still the same person talking to her. The bitterness that was there just a moment ago has turned to a kind of brittle irony, and when she looks up, Stamets’ eyes are surprisingly free of blame. “It’s all right,” he murmurs, squinting as if to push past a headache, his tone suggesting he’s still trying to convince himself of the truth of his words. “I have to give it to you: you’re the first one I talk to who’s not dodging the subject every chance they have. Even Tilly is. On one hand, I can understand why, but…”

“You can only leave a wound untended for so long until it starts to fester,” Michael says, then winces as Stamets’ jaw clenches, hard. He no longer looks angry at all; just very pale, and very tired, and as alone as she felt on the Emperor’s ship at the end. “Will you be all right?” she says softly. It feels like too intimate a question, but her instincts tell her she has to ask.

The smile Stamets manages is almost too painful to watch. “Is there a choice?” he says, with a faint shrug. “There’s a war on. Good people have died. More are going to die if we start falling apart now.”

Michael nods, but the tension in her chest tells her this is all wrong. “It is… unhealthy to deny one’s emotions,” she mutters, knowing all too well how empty it sounds.

“What kind of Vulcan _are_ you, anyway?” Stamets says, a hint of the old acerbity in his voice. Then he winces, and his shoulders slump, and the moment is gone. “ _I_ talked to him,” he says, his eyes wide and unblinking as they fix on the floor. “Tyler. I ran into him just now, when I left the mess hall. For all the wild rumors I heard, he didn’t seem too different from before. Except for the part where I couldn’t even look at him without remembering his hands around Hugh’s neck.”

Stamets _saw_ it happen? Somehow, in the various iterations of the story she heard, no one had thought to mention that fact. Or maybe no one knew? “I’m…” Michael begins, but how does one respond to that kind of revelation in a way that doesn't do more harm than good? “I… didn’t know,” she says finally, when the silence becomes leaden. “What did you do?”

A tremor passes across Stamets’ frame, his face contorting. “All I could think of…” he says, his voice lurching before it locks into a rigid monotone, “was that I wanted him to hurt like I was hurting. I can still hear the sound of when he snapped Hugh’s neck. I wanted to know if it haunted him too. I - I wanted…” He trails off, breath hissing through his teeth.

“You wanted justice,” she says softly, the knot in her stomach tightening as she imagines the state he must have been in.”For Dr. Culber. I understand.”

“No, I didn’t, and no, you don’t.” He swallows convulsively, wraps his arms around himself. “What I wanted was to get back at him.” He looks ill now, brittle and rigid and raw, like he’s struggling not to cry. “Ironically, the only thing that stopped me was Hugh. I don’t know what else I might have said or done, if not for the thought that Hugh would want me to be better than that. But I’m not. Not really. Not… without him.”

“No. You _are._ ” She doesn’t know where the sudden vehemence comes from, or why it’s so important that she prove him wrong on this. “You _are_ better than that,” she repeats, stressing every syllable. “And I think you are selling yourself short. You are speaking as if every kind impulse in you is because of Dr. Culber, but try as I might, I find that very difficult to believe.”

“Then maybe you should try harder,” he says, his voice cracking on the words, and suddenly his lip trembles and his breath stops and a single, traitorous tear comes spilling down across his cheek. For some reason, Michael’s own eyes are burning, and when Stamets turns away in shame or self-preservation, some instinct she didn’t know she possessed makes her squeeze his shoulder and refuse to let go.

“Maybe I should,” she whispers, barely managing it through the tightness in her chest. “But I’m not going to. I don’t want to be your judge; I want to be your friend.” It takes saying it to realize it’s true: not just that she wants to be, but that she thinks she should. Which is so unexpected a thought that it stops her dead in her tracks. Six months ago, she had no one, and look at her now. Not at peace with herself - that, she may never truly be - but surrounded by people who understand and know and _care_. She lost Tyler, yes, and it hurts terribly, but this time she didn’t lose everything. Not like she did back on the _Shenzhou._

Remembering that is the final straw. When the tears start to flow, there’s no way she can fight them, and the next thing she knows there are arms around her, pulling her close, a hand rubbing her back as she clings to Stamets for dear life, or he is clinging to her, or both. She hasn’t held anyone since the last time she held Tyler, can’t recall ever sobbing into a friend’s shoulder before, and the embrace is strange and graceless and every bit as awkward as one might expect, yet something inside her doesn’t want it to end.

It’s Stamets who pulls back first, his eyes red and puffy as he swallows and nods - soldier to soldier, friend to friend. _Okay?_ the nod asks, and she nods back _okay_ , wiping her cheek with the back of her hand.

“Tyler told me…” she says, wincing at how shaky she’s sounding, trying to resist the feeling she shouldn’t say this at all, “that he resisted for so long because of me. That should count for something… shouldn’t it? And yet all I can think of is how, if he _hadn’t_ loved me, I might have been spared some of this.”

“But then he wouldn’t have loved you,” Stamets says softly, looking like he’s about to break. “Don’t give me that look, I can tell that you believe he did - so regardless of my feelings on the matter, yeah, that should count for something. _Hugh_ would definitely say it does.” It’s Stamets’ turn now to drag a hand across his eyes, although it doesn’t really help matters much. “I… saw Hugh, you know. In the network. I haven’t told anyone, but it’s the only reason I haven’t given up entirely. If I had, I - I honestly don’t know if I’d still be here.” That last statement is delivered in an oddly flat tone, and mere days ago, Michael would have let it pass, but not this time.

“You’d still be here,” she says, willing herself to believe it, letting him hear the conviction in her voice. “Not for Dr. Culber. Not for Starfleet. For _us_. This crew needs you, Lieutenant. You won’t let them down.”

“They… need me?” Stamets breathes, and it sounds like a question, except for the tiny glimmer of light in his eyes.

*

**Author's Note:**

> My first time writing Michael's pov, and my first time writing Paul through her eyes. I just adore their interactions, and after all they've both been through... well, I just felt they could both use a good hug. :)


End file.
